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Essays on Anne sexton

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... Sexton through her relatively short and controversial career divulged in a diverse and distinct style of writing. It would be impossible to regard her poetry without so much as taking an insightful glimpse at her personal life. She is known as among the first to immerse in confessional poetry and her candor and even personal struggle makes for a compelling reading of her works. The honesty she evokes makes it sometimes difficult to remove one’s self from an instinct to capitulate to the author and focus on the persona of the poem. Surely, Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ does not apply to reading Sexton.
The person responsible for Sexton picking up the pen is her psychiatrist Dr. Martin Orne....

... English 2 November’ Role of Anne Sexton’s Mental Illness in her Poetry Anne Sexton was a Twentieth century feminist Shewrote her first poem at the age of 17 which was published in the year book of Rogers Hall which was a preparatory school for girls in Lowell Mass. However her mother who belonged to a family of writers accused her of plagiarism. Her mother’s discouragement and her marriage to Alfred Muller Sexton II put a temporary stop to her writing career. However in 1954 Anne began struggling with recurring depression and began seeking counseling. In the beginning of the year 1956 her mental condition worsened which lead her to her first psychiatric hospitalization and her first suicide attempt. ...

... and woman have struggled against God from creation. Since they were formed and completed by God, human beings have been in a constant struggle.God crafted man and woman, Adam and Eve, into forms of his likeness, in his own image. However, the constant struggle of the human race was derived because of the "great fall" of Adam and Eve. Even since that time, human beings have never been the same.
God explained to Adam and Eve, in the garden, that they could eat from any tree they wanted, but not from the tree of life. However, having been tricked by the serpent ["For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3...

... “The Starry Night Anne Sexton and Vincent Van Gogh. Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night” is an ekphrastic poem inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s masterpiece “Starry Night.” Both Sexton and van Gogh suffered from psychological disorders and underwent prolonged stays in mental hospitals. Their works are a form of catharsis: Sexton’s “writing, in fact, began as therapy” (Poetry Foundation), while van Gogh was at his most prolific during his stay at the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he painted “Starry Night” (Dietrich). It can be said that Sexton uses words to paint a graphic picture, while van Gogh uses his painting to communicate without words. Sexton’s poem reflects van Gogh’s painting in its call for help,...

... The four American poets Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and Billy Collins bring a different style toward poems. The style could be considered uniquely American. The American backdrops of settings for these poets make the American landscape come alive. Billy Collins does stand out by making his poems come from a first person view point. These four poets will have one poem each analyzed below.
Anne Sexton
The poem by Anne Sexton chosen is “The Farmer’s Wife.” In “The Farmer’s Wife” a woman contemplates the routine of her life. Her husband feels fulfilled by working by day, then coming home to be intimate with his wife. The routine is fine for the husband, but the wife feels ther...

... 12 June Meaninglessness of Women’s Life in Sexton’s “Cinderella” Some girls grow up wanting to be Cinderella, a beautifulmaiden whose fate is changed because of their marriage to a handsome, wealthy prince, but this is nothing but ash to Anne Sexton. Sexton’s “Cinderella” is a poem of burnt dreams. She might have once believed that she is Cinderella too, but she is disappointed with real life, so she burns these fairy tales that promised her everlasting bliss. The poem argues that a woman’s life is as meaningless as fairy tales because both produce and perpetuate gender stereotypes that create artificial notions of happiness and success. Cinderella does not exist, and yet many women are socially...

... Sexton Affiliation Anne Sexton Anne Sexton began writing poetry at a very young age of 29 as a way of engaging herself andavoiding committing suicide. She suffered from mental illness and was an alcoholic but still she managed to create an interesting work of poetry valued by many readers. Her bibliography of her life full of controversies promoted her work, as many people were interested in reading her work.
Anne’s bibliography is an interesting piece to read full of imagery that attracted interested artist and made them read more of it and compare with their work. Her work was a form of confessional poetry rich in poetic styles and brought out the sensational part of her life and the real life of m...

... Use of Language YourFirst YourLast The Starry Night The Poem known as the "Starry Night," written by Anne Sexton examines the famous painting "The Starry Night" done by Vincent Gogh. The writers visual examination means that the cypress tree denoted as the "black-haired tree" stands for death, the ultimate freedom that guides to the stars that also signify human souls illuminating vibrantly in the skies. In the painting, the clouds are interpreted as the unobserved serpent eating the shown eleven stars. Also in this painting, the moon is unusually colored orange; where Anne explains that, the sky is very hot, boiling. Metaphorically interpreted, maybe it is associated to the notion that souls...

... of the of the Submitted English 2 Lesson # 3 Example of the following types of figurative language from poems in Collection 8: Poem Title: ‘Courage’ by Anne Sexton Simile: The child’s first step, as awesome as an earthquake (Lines 2 &3). What the Simile adds to the Poem: The poet uses figurative language in order to make the poem interesting and its themes reverberate with the readers as they are taken through many of life’s instances where courage was needed to be shown. Many parents would recall with delight and joy their child’s first steps. The poet is writing from the child’s viewpoint or from an observer’s viewpoint that the reaction to this would be so much discussed that it would seem as...

... of Woman-centric Themes in the Poetry of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich The lives of poets have always been under scrutiny. Their lives have in most cases, influenced the kind of poetry they have written, both as far as form and content are concerned. The kinds of themes that have been taken up by women poets have in many cases, reflected the concerns of women in a largely patriarchal society. The cases of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich are no different. This paper shall seek to analyze the poetry of these three poets, looking at the thematic and formal convergences in their poetry. The woman-centric themes of the poems shall be dealt with in this paper. The formal...

... The poem Cinderella by Anne Sexton is a parody of the ic Brothers Grimm fairy tail. It contains significant social commentary and symbolic imagery that causes the reader to perceive a measure of absurdity inherent in the original fairy tale. Sexton's poem makes substantial departures from the fairy tale in many key areas that are hallmarks of the classic story, such as the fairy godmother and the glass slipper. Ultimately, Sexton powerfully evokes feminist ideals in vividly portraying the undesirable realism of the general events that unfold in the Brothers Grimm story.
Social Commentary
Sexton's use of imagery to evoke a felling of absurdity is evident throughout her poem, and is used as a tool to e...

... Poetry Explication Paper [Literature] The poem “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward” by Anne Sexton tells the story of a mother just giving birth in the hospital. The mother chooses not to name the father of the baby, as he has decided not to care for the infant. Judging by the words used in the final stanza, the reader feels that the mother, while attached to the child with a motherly instinct, is still rather distant from the baby. She refers to the baby as her “fragile visitor” and notes that people have “traded life before.” The mother responds to the moments with the baby as though she were detached from it, as opposed to actually experiencing it.
Both the mother and the baby are anonymous throu...

... Later 20th-Century Poets “To My Last Period” by Lucille Clifton In her creation “To My Last Period”, Lucille Clifton confronts a turning point of womanhood with firm acknowledgement of truth which is each woman’s fair share. The poem depicts how Clifton herself experiences the final stages of menstrual flow and personifies the last as a “girl” who is “splendid” in her “red dress” yet “never arrived” thirty eight years later. Marked by subsidence from the dynamic state of youth, the poet’s tone consoles the ensuing bleakness of the situation by justifying that at such point, somehow, there exists the absence of painstaking trouble in having to take care of periodic menstruation. Clifton may be felt...

... Death and Madness from The Starry Night Many artists have taken inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpiece called The Starry Night. Perceived as the painter’s last hope for success before his death by suicide, the masterpiece has always been associated with death and madness. These themes of death and madness are reflected in two poems, one written by Anne Sexton and another by Robert Fagles. Both poems attempt to interpret the experience of the painter, but each offers a different outlook about the world.
Death is undeniably the main theme of Sexton’s poem. The readers can assume that the persona of the poem is Van Gogh himself, thus the lines of the poem are Sexton’s reflective thoughts about...

... December 11, Fantastic and Dead-end: Marriage in Sexton’s “Cinderella” “Cinderella” is one of the most popular romantic and classic rags-to-riches stories of all time, but, as a fairy tale, it can be spun around to mean something else. Anne Sexton uses a feminist viewpoint in retelling “Cinderella,” so that readers can see it in another perspective- the standpoint of a woman who does not see anything advantageous for women who are trapped in a story of marriage markets and materialistic endeavours. Sexton’s narrative poem uses diverse literary elements to question the underlying social and gender issues of “Cinderella.” Sexton argues through imagery, repetition, sarcasm, and symbolism that the main...

... Poetry I. “The Fury of Overshoes” by Anne Sexton The focus is on the overshoes because it de s what the child may be wearing the whole day as the child learns things about life. It also conveys that the overshoes takes the child where he or she wants to go. It could also mean putting the reader in the shoes of the child who is beginning to learn about the wonders of life. For the child, the steps in the snow convey how he or she wonders how it is to be an adult “taking giant steps” (line 42). For the adult, it could mean remembering and appreciating how it is to be a child wondering how adults are capable of taking big steps towards what he or she wants to do it life. In the lines “and thinking...

... Femininity in poetry Poetry is a powerful voice that is useful in amplifying certain ills in the contemporary society. Poems let individuals witness the intensity of wrong things that are normalized in the society. It is crucial to analyze femininity in the context of oppression since women have perennially faced a diminished status in the society. This does not suggest that other representations of femininity are not valid. For instance, some schools of thought may view femininity as a form of sacred beauty. The poems of Clifton, Sexton, and Rich focuses on how a woman face suppression in their ordinary lives and manifest how a woman can arise out of such confined spaces.
Femininity entwines with t...

... Defining Evil Maybe it is because our society is so focused on religious doctrine, whether we are one of the faithful or one of those doing our best to avoid it, but America seems completely fixated on the idea of evil. The word is thrown around a lot, but what do we really mean when we use the word 'evil'? According to the Free Online Dictionary, evil can be either an adjective or a noun. As an adjective, it can mean "morally bad or wrong; causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful; characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous; bad or blameworthy; characterized by anger or spite; malicious" (2011). Many of these same terms are used in the definition of evil as a noun: "the quality of being ...

... Plath In Sylvia Plath’s poem “Tulips”, which first appeared in Ariel, the describes her metaphysical journey experienced during a stay at a hospital. Written in 1961 when Plath was admitted to the hospital for an appendectomy, the speaker of the poem is the hospital patient as she undergoes the surgical process. She is speaking more to herself than anyone, describing her experience as she first accepts the descent into oblivion and then awakens again to life. Consisting of nine stanzas, each with seven lines, this poem represents a unique structure in that the first half is an acceptance of nothingness, the central stanza balances on the edge and the second half returns to awareness.
The languag...

... 13 December Sylvia Plath as a Confessional Poet Sylvia Plath was a young and poet with a life only 30 years long. Within that short period of time, she wrote many poems, many that were confessional of the pain that afflicted her own life. Through the use of words and the life that she knew, there are many uses of words and imagery of pain, loneliness, and hopelessness. For Plath, these are not just topics of discussion to simply write about. In an analysis of her work and a glimpse into her own biography, it is easier to comprehend why Sylvia Plath was a poet and writer who could be labeled as a confessional poet.
A confessional poet is a category given to categorize literature in a particular g...

... inquiry into depictions of Female Madness in Contemporary Literature A probe into Female Madness in Contemporary Literature convinces one of the myriads of intense mental and psychic experiences that women had to undergo; how far the depiction of female madness in literature is in proximity with real life is to be explored and unearthed. There is no doubt that literature deals with the life of man whether it be real or imaginary; human experiences of various era have contributed to various types of literature. The treatment of human madness or insanity in literature can be traced back to the very origin of the latter itself. One can find traces of the theme of madness in the Bible, myths and in the...

... No: Marge Piercy's Poem the "Barbie Doll" Analysis Introduction The poem by Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll describes a girl who kills herself due to her inability to meet the overwhelming cultural and societal expectations that the society places on young girls as they grow up into womanhood. The author presents the gender label using Barbie Doll, an image enforced by the society as the ideal beautiful woman. She seems to concur with the author and feminist activist, Naomi Woolf (2002), who stated that “we are in the midst of a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement: the beauty myth…is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical...

... of the of the Supervisor] ical and Greek Hero: A Comparison Introduction Let's start by making some clarifications of the terminology. The word hero can be used to designate different concepts and various approaches and express ways. Thus, in a first traditional sense, the term refers to the hero son of a god or goddess and a mortal. Another meaning, tells us that the hero is the protagonist of a work. We find the definition of hero in the Dictionary of Mythology Universal Worship and the Primitive: "Hero (From the Greek Heros, genito. Hero. Equivalent to Sanskrit bends" strong man or brave, "and the Latin vir, "male"): Protectors of the people, who after his death were turned into public hands, and ...

... Othering is used to establish a binary opposition between the Self and the Other, so as to establish and maintain the power of the Self by stigmatizing and isolating the Other. Othering stem from all forms of differences, such as racial, cultural, religious, socioeconomic, and geographical differences. Otherness is a significant concept in postcolonial studies as the imperial authority labels the colonized as the Others in order to exercise power over them. Othering is also common in the society where people label people based on stereotypes and see their own practice as the best way.
In Anne Sexton’s Her Kind, the narrator identifies herself as an Other but at the same time celebrates her Othe...

... research paper on J.K Rowling Life before hip: Some may feel that Rowling’s life before hip was a fantasy story because it tells the importance of willpower in human life. For instance, Rowling believed in her ability to create fantasy tales, but she was not sure whether she can make use of the same for a living or not. Joanne Mattern stated that, “J.K. Rowling did not expect her books to become such a huge success” (Mattern, 3). In every juncture of her private life, she carried her imaginative power with her. She faced so many hardships in her life, but it did not weaken her willpower. Her childhood life in the countryside ignited her deep interest in storytelling. Philip Nel stated that, “Both...